Detour back to the roots – Chap. 5, Act 3, Strip 36

Yeah, Mopey just doesn’t look and act as gothic as she used to, in this chapter, – I guess it’s called “backsliding”, and apparently it happens a lot to dead-again Satanists when the initial religious fevour wears off. So it was high time to give her an opportunity to get in touch with her gothic roots again. I wasn’t sure where gothicness even originates, but I figured out all by myself (pats own back) that it must have something to do with the Gothic Line*, a system of military fortifications from the Second World War. And time-traveling back from 15th century central Italy to modern day London is just ideal for a little detour to northern Italy in 1944! It’ll hardly cost them any extra fuel.

Mopey is so elated that she’s even able to generously overlook the fact that the time-machine has given her another white outfit. It didn’t have many other female outfits to offer for that place and time, anyway. As for Biff and Time-on, they didn’t get a much more varied choice, either – seems fashion tended a bit strongly toward uniformity at that time in history.

Biff, of course, is guarding the transformed time machine. He’s a bit nervous, and not only because of the occasional shellburst. He knows that his gramps is running around there somewhere, he remembers the stories, and naturally that has him somewhat worried. No, not because of the potential time paradox thing – he mostly zoned out during that part of the Professor’s time travel class a bit earlier. The thing is just, his gramps could be pretty strict about some things, so when he finds his own grandson fighting for Adolf Hitler, Biff will likely get spanked. His other worry is that persistent Waffen-SS recruiter who’s dropped by a couple of times already. For the first time in his life, Biff is starting to feel really self-conscious about being blond, blue-eyed and square-jawed…up to now, he had always seen it as a good thing, but a guy can only be told so often how perfect he’d fit in with Hitler’s favoured sons before he’ll start to doubt himself.

*My alternative theories were that the name for the subculture derives from the art style or genre of fiction also referred to as “Gothic”. But those just didn’t make as much sense. The Gothic Line is strongly connected with death and misery on a massive scale, and left behind many scenic, by now overgrown, ruins – a perfect fit!. Thus Ockham’s razor was used to cut off all of those other, more far-fetched theories.